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- your team offsite probably isn't doing what you think it is
your team offsite probably isn't doing what you think it is
how to make in-person time actually count for distributed teams
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👋 Welcome back to All Things Remote: weekly tips for building a better remote team.
Most remote teams treat the annual offsite like a reward.
The agenda is light, the evenings are long, and everyone comes back feeling good.
But three weeks later? The team is back to exactly how they were before.
That's not an offsite, that's a holiday on the company card 👀
In today's send:
✅ Why most remote offsites don't actually move the team forward
✅ What in-person time does that nothing else can
✅ How to build an agenda that makes the time count
I'd love to know 👇️
How often does your remote team meet in person? |
Top reads this week:
How to plan a team offsite that's actually worth the money
35+ tips for employee engagement and wellbeing worth actually implementing
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Most remote leaders I speak to have the same instinct when it comes to the offsite.
Book somewhere nice, fill the days with activities and let the team unwind.
And that instinct isn't wrong, your team does need to unwind….
But if that's the whole plan, you've just spent $2,000–$4,000 per person on a team holiday.
Here's the thing nobody says out loud: most offsites don't actually change anything.
The conversations feel great in the moment and everyone returns energised.
But… just two or three weeks, everything slides back to how it was.
Not because the team didn't enjoy it but because the offsite wasn't designed to do anything specific.
What in-person time actually does well 👇️
Distributed teams genuinely need in-person time, but not for the reasons most leaders think.
Atlassian found that intentional in-person time produces a 27% increase in connection and that boost lasts four to five months.
The key word is intentional.
The things that genuinely benefit from being in a room: big decisions that have been going in circles on Slack. Honest conversations people have been putting off. Creative work that gets stuck over async back-and-forth. The kind of relationship-building that makes hard feedback land well when you're back online.
Not general updates, not boring presentations and certainly not anything that could have been a Slack message.